Story of Manek Jana – Making most of Opportunities

Opportunities are hard to find but when young people like Manek Jana get an opportunity, they make the best of it by working hard and provide path for others to make something out of those opportunities.

Manek is now 20 years old and comes from an extremely financially challenged background.  Manek became a part Sarada Kalyan Bhandar(SKB), in 2nd Grade, and worked very hard to stay in school and maintain his grades.  He completed his 12th Grade with SKB’s continued support and currently is a final year student in Bachelors majoring in Chemistry. You would think what is so different about Manek?

Manek today teaches science to children of 9th and 10th grade who are in SKB. In his own words, Manek feels SKB instilled great values in him, which he is thankful for, every day of his life. These values and the goal of SKB inspired and motivated him to help the others. It is the only way he feels, he could give back for the opportunity he got as a child. He regularly visits his neighbors to motivate them to send their children to school and get education- which he believes is the greatest opportunity of life!

Sometimes the simplest successes are huge parameters of development and provide an urge to follow those directions, bringing difference in others’ lives.

SKB is a rural educational welfare center, based in a remote village in Midnapore, West Bengal, India, dedicated to providing opportunities for academic & all round development of rural children. Vibha has been partnering with SKB since 2005, and has reached out to more than 500 children till date. This is an enormous achievement for SKB and Vibha, to be able to touch so many lives consistently- and you have been the backbone for this tremendous effort! We at Vibha are geared to continue encouraging more Maneks to come forward and walk together with us to achieve our dream and be part of this journey.

– written by Mahua Chatterjee